Silylating agents have been developed in the art which react with and coat surfaces, such as silica surfaces. For example, silylating agents for use in modifying silica used in high performance chromatography packings have been developed. Monofunctional silylating agents have been used to form monolayer surface coatings, while di- and tri-functional silylating agents have been used to form polymerized coatings on silica surfaces. Many silylating agents, however, produce coatings with undesirable properties including instability to hydrolysis and the inadequate ability to mask the silica surface which may contain residual acidic silanols.
Recently, a method has been reported for grafting polystrene films to glass surfaces using a photoactivatable silane. Prucker et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 121:8766 (1999). The system is based on a photoreactive benzophenone derivative that is bound to SiO2 surfaces via a silane anchor.